Building a Business in Lockdown | Values & Goal Setting

Shareholders stood around a whiteboard

I am sure at some point during the festive period, everyone had that exact same thought. What day of the week is it?

From my experience it is quite easy to remember the date over the Christmas holidays, but the day of the week possesses a different challenge altogether.

During 2020 that feeling happened a lot more than normal and you cannot blame everything on overindulging, although admittedly at times the recycling bin was a bit fuller than usual. Instead, the reason for the lack of clarity at times was because it was a year full of uncertainty and change that many of us have never seen before. Also, the days often blurred into one and there was no real change between weekday and weekend.

When I left Macquarie and started Hexa I knew that there was a lot to do between August and November, but I was not exactly sure where I needed to start. By my own admission, I am not someone who lives by a diary and not someone who traditionally sets too many goals and objectives. But what I did know is that I needed to draw up a list of “To Do’s” and put some realistic timelines against each of them to make sure I gave the business the best possible start. I also knew that we would naturally find our own way of goal/objective setting that motivates us and helps grow Hexa.

In my November & December posts I talked about the importance of supplier relationships and showcased the work we had done with Webber Design on branding which were both extremely important parts of our start-up phase. Another key part of the planning was to come up with a set of values that would hopefully help keep us on the straight and narrow and shape the culture of our business. In true modern-day fashion, we turned to Google to search for values, not because we did not know what we wanted to stand for but more to check how other businesses had articulated their culture.

For us, when we started to jot down some ideas it was not about the name of the value but more about how we were going to link them to our products and services and why? Naturally with the name Hexa, we had to come up with 6 and I like to think we have landed on a mixture of conventional and original.

It has been just over two months since our official launch on November 9th and it is safe to say that no two days have been the same. We have been lucky enough to work with some great customers, suppliers, and funding partners so far and have plenty going on to keep us busy. Something in the current market that we are extremely grateful for.

To finish off with objective setting, one of my original goals was to make sure our technology was easy to follow, after all “Simplicity is Key”. As if by magic, Stuart has taken to our CRM like a duck to water and is even challenging me on what data we should be capturing on each deal.

Even if you are like me and are not particularly regimented when it comes to objective setting, there is still plenty of ways you can focus your efforts to make sure “Time Matters”. On that note, I need to check how we are getting on against this weeks Magic 6 and best not forget bringing in the recycling boxes from the driveway.

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